21CN / WBC: Villagers bounce back

A broadstroke comparison to 'Bank of Dave', our village has simply had enough

Our exchange is here:
SamKnows - Broadband Availability - Wickwar (SSWWR) Exchange
We have had 8mb broadband (full 8mb as we sit on the exchange) for a while now and 21CN was pencilled in for Mar 2011.
However, the pencil marks were rubbed out and no upgrade is now set, ever since the announcement of FTTC
We have no cable in the area and 8mb is now the equivalent of 512kb broadband. Especially when you have teenagers in the house!
As BT had no plans for a 21CN network for our exchange, I bandied the idea about to a few of the villagers to unbundle the exchange ourselves.
A figure quoted from another question I asked put the cost at about £100,000 for the outlay
We could easily club together that amount very instantly
My question is;
How we could go about it?

Who to contact?

Prices involved?

Hardware needed?

Who manages it in the exchange?
I have a million questions, but if someone pointed me in the right direction, I could get the ball moving very very quickly. We are now sick of being held to ransom as BT hits FTTC to the population density areas and leave us in the lurch.
Any help you can give us would be greatly appreciated

http://www.choose.net/media/guide/features/rural-bro...

http://wraycomcom.org.uk/

I imagine 100K is far too high for a 21CN changeover, given the costs of fibre for Iwade.

See their blog:

http://www.iwadevillage.co.uk/services.aspx?subnavid=42

2009 survey:

http://iwadevillage.co.uk/broadbandsurvey2009results...

First step would be to establish the proportion of residents who are unhappy, and then see who would pay for faster broadband (rollout). The survey itself might help the community to be more aware of others being in the same situation.

If you unbundle the exchange yourselfs, then who is going to provide the ISP services?

Might you not find it easier to just make it more attractive for a Sky or TalkTalk to do the work?

Fabulous read. Thank you very much to all

So if I am reading this correctly. If we put up x (roughly £65k) amount of pounds, BT will install FTTC?
Money is not an option. We are in the "10% that won't be on Super Fast Broadband by 2015"
I have a daughter, as we speak, on YOUTUBE and my wife is screaming at me because she cannot watch iPlayer without buffering, at the same time. Which leaves me with dial-up leftovers
Not to mention, my 16 year old is not home yet! Spotify, XBOX Live etc

In today's age, 8 meg is not enough for a family
That is why our village will pay itself for FTTC

What if we do pay for all of it. Do we own the pipes etc, like we would 21CN hardware?
Is BT then like a sub-contractor?

Answers to others. No we wouldn't want to be our own ISP, although someone would manage it if asked. Talented people around here and people are giving up their time and effort for this.

Sky and BT will not do it. 900 houses only on the exchange

Edited by o1nk (Sat 04-Aug-12 16:38:54)

How close is the Openreach FTTC network already? As you can FTTC enable cabinets on an exchange without enabling the WBC network expansion at an exchange.

On the smaller exchanges I suspect this will be the preferred method, with the eventual plan to remove the exchange completely, reducing the costs to Openreach.

if you pay for FTTC from Openreach you DO NOT own it, you have simply underwritten the capex costs, and would still need to pay the standard monthly fees, but has the advantage if hardware breaks you are not paying to replace it.

I should point out, just in case its not obvious, 21CN is generally delivered as ADSL2+ from the exchange, FTTC is a step on top of that, and for those only getting 3 to 4 Meg now ADSL2+ makes very little difference. Those who benefit will be those with a 42dB attenuation (3.5km) or shorter line.

If you are on a connection that is faster than 5 Mbps now, and struggling to buffer iPlayer, then something else is wrong. People assume FTTC is needed, but very often the problem may not be the DSL side but the ISP.

Looking at maps.thinkbroadband.com shows people getting speeds well below what you would expect for the distance from the telephone exchange.

Put it this way, with resonable house wiring, you should have a sync of 5 Meg now right out to a road distance from 3km from the exchange. The people with speedtests posted are all on ISPs who I would NOT recommend for an exchange that is not unbundled, since for these offnet connections, the providers invest very little in the backhaul, which may be the limiting factor. You might find people like BT, Plusnet, Zen, IDNet, Post Office provide better service.

Chipping Sodbury is the closet exchange that will have FTTC deployed by Openreach in 2013.

The B4060 links Chipping and Wickwar with BT ducting in the road, would be the likely route for fibre backhaul to the Wickwar cabinets.

It would be worth getting in contact with your local BDUK project as the project leader/manager should be able to help your village by possibly including it in their project plans due to the investment from the village or provide details for BT regional managers.

http://www.southglos.gov.uk/NR/exeres/b8067c55-297d-...

Under the 'find out more' section the community broadband has a very interesting PDF that talks about local broadband setups- the various stages/requirements etc.

Edited by ccxo (Sat 04-Aug-12 17:14:00)

Thanks for the heads up MrSaffron.

FTTC will be in the next town exchange in spring 2013, which is 5 miles away
As for this:

As you can FTTC enable cabinets on an exchange without enabling the WBC network expansion at an exchange.

On the smaller exchanges I suspect this will be the preferred method, with the eventual plan to remove the exchange completely, reducing the costs to Openreach.

I am not quite sure what you mean.
I have to have an adjacent exchange to us with FTTC?
Or can it be enabled without having one close by?

As for our exchange, I am one of the furthest away in our village. Just 1/4 mile away
At the moment I get the full 8meg

The buffering of iplayer is due to my daughter raping youtube at the same time and my son streaming spotify all the time (as well as XBOX live). We have to stop one to give relief to the other

At the end of the day we don't care who owns what after, we just want to all be on FTTC now rather than 10 years time.
Cable won't come out here (extra 3.5 miles)
BT says it's not profitable

If just 200 people take out their broadband FTTC package at £18 pm
And 200 people take out the 76mb FTTC at £26 per month
That's 400 customers taking just broadband at an average of £22pm
That is £8800 per month
If the cost is £65000, that would be profitable in 8 months?

Edited by o1nk (Sat 04-Aug-12 18:24:33)

In reply to a post by o1nk:

If just 200 people take out their broadband FTTC package at £18 pm
And 200 people take out the 76mb FTTC at £26 per month
That's 400 customers taking just broadband at an average of £22pm
That is £8800 per month
If the cost is £65000, that would be profitable in 8 months?

That's cost vs turnover. The profit margins are far less than that. The wholesale price per month might be £12 or so (I forget the exact figure).

Further to @MrSaffron's reply...

You haven't said who your ISP is (sorry if I've missed it) and it's also worth saying what your current IP Profile is in case something else is going on.

I'm a few miles from my exchange (5000 IP Profile via Freeola/Entanet connection) and my family can manage to 'do' numerous iPlayer/YouTube's at the same time!

I'm also on a olde-world exchange with no options so appreciate your situation but things shouldn't be so bad for you are you are on such a short line while you are working on making things better

In reply to a post by o1nk:

I have a daughter, as we speak, on YOUTUBE and my wife is screaming at me because she cannot watch iPlayer without buffering, at the same time. Which leaves me with dial-up leftovers

This isn't surprising given that the Olympics are on. Huge numbers streaming iPlayer for events that aren't on free TV.

In the morning we watched the Andy Murray quarter-final. A couple of times we got buffering, or perhaps it was the BBC feed packed up on our connection, as we had to close and re-open the window and restart the streaming.

Nothing else being downloaded - 56065kbps FTTC connection.